Public schools in San Francisco and Oakland are among those projected to get a larger-than-average bump in funding under Gov. Jerry Brown's new proposal to distribute a larger share of money to districts with higher percentages of low-income students and English learners.

As Brown said in his State of the State speech last month, "Equal treatment for children in unequal situations is not justice." Brown's new formula would also free districts from having to spend money on dozens of state-mandated requirements that legislators have piled up on them.

No district or charter school would receive less funding than it will in the current fiscal year, which ends in June, according to Department of Finance projections released Wednesday.

But while legislators on both sides of the aisle say they agree with the governor's goals, Brown's Local Control Funding Formula faces a political minefield as he tries to steer what could be the biggest impact on public education since 1978's tax-slashing Proposition 13 through the Legislature.

His proposal promises to turn California politics on its head, scrambling partisan alliances as nothing has for decades. Well-to-do suburban districts say the new formula gives them less than their fair share. Cash-strapped urban districts worry they're not getting enough.

With every school district in the state peering at what their neighbors are getting in a pique of funding envy, legislators foresee some rural Republicans bonding with urban Democrats, and suburban legislators of all stripes linking arms.

Jumping into the battle royal will be an army of lobbyists in Sacramento dedicated to preserving decades of education programs mandated by the Legislature.

How good a deal?

Officials from some districts that stand to gain the most aren't sure they are getting the very best deal.

"In principle we love what they are doing," said Troy Flint, a spokesman for the Oakland Unified School District, which stands to go from receiving $7,091 per pupil as it did in the 2011-12 school year to $10,951 when the formula is fully implemented in 2019-20.

But in what is likely to be a preview of what will be heard from other districts, Flint quibbled with how the state calculated Oakland's revised share.

The state projected that 62 percent of Oakland's students qualified as low-income. Flint said the district's figure is 68 percent. Over the first five years that the new formula is implemented, per-student funding levels are projected to grow by about $2,700 per student.

Comparing districts

But because school districts are starting from different base levels of funding, some districts wonder whether they are gaining or losing compared with neighboring districts.

The San Ramon Valley Unified School District, where roughly 2 percent of the students are low-income and 5 percent are English learners, received $5,987 per student in 2011-12 and would receive $8,317 in 2019-20. The nearby Livermore Valley School District, where 23 percent of the students are low-income and 13 percent are English learners, will bump up from $6,178 to $9,030 over that period.

"I wouldn't describe us as losers, exactly, but we're not exactly celebrating big wins, either. It's almost a break-even, maybe a little increase from what we would have gotten under the old funding formula," said Mary Shelton, superintendent of the 30,000-student San Ramon Valley Unified School District.

Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo, who chairs the Education Committee, said what makes Brown's task more complex politically is that "there are very few (Assembly) members who represent only one school district.

"It will put people in a very difficult situation," Buchanan said. "One member came up to me and said, 'Eight of my school districts lose and two benefit. What do I do?' "

Breaking the lockstep

Whatever coalition emerges is unlikely to resemble the usual formation of Democrats and Republicans marching in lockstep. "It will be more rural versus urban," said Assembly Minority Leader Connie Conway, R-Tulare.

Brown supporters fear that calling some districts funding "losers" will kill his proposal politically. Technically, that description is not accurate because no district will receive less funding than it does now.

"But think about it," said Buchanan, a former school board member who represents parts of suburban Contra Costa and Alameda counties that include districts that won't see the largest gains.

"If that's frozen for the next five years, are you winning or are you losing? I guarantee those districts' utility bills are going up and everything else is going up. And if you don't have any kind of cost-of-living increase, you're cutting programs year after year."

Strong means test

Republican Southern California Assemblyman Curt Hagman is happy to see more control returning to districts, but he is wary of how the supplemental money will be distributed.

"There has got to be a strong means test," said Hagman, who represents Chino Hills (San Bernardino County). "What does it mean to be an English learner? What does it mean to be at a certain income level? How are you verifying that and not just signing everybody up for it because they live in the same city?"

The state ranks 49th in the nation for per-pupil spending, according to a study published last month by Education Week magazine.

"While we can try to change the direction of future dollars and target more resources than we currently do to districts with a larger number of low-income students," Weston said, "the average funding in the state is still way below the national average."